• 06
  Oct
  2009

• Health insurance plus an emergency fund

  
  Filed Under: Health Insurance

Many international students in the USA consider health insurance premiums to be very high and out of the affordable range. There are, however, ways to reduce the premium. Increasing the deductible and co-insurance amounts in the policy will give you a much better (read affordable) premium.

Assume you have set your deductible to $5000. That is quite a huge amount. You would only do this if you are a "usually healthy" kind of person, and the policy is meant to take care of astronomical costs only - like an auto accident or an operation or such. Make an educated estimate, see what amount seems correct, and decide if it is worth the risk.

If you decide to do this, it is considered a good practice to keep your deductible amount in an emergency fund. That is, in case a major health care expenditure has to be met, you should keep it ready and available for immediate use.

Or, you could start out with smaller deductible (meaning higher premium) and build a corpus in a separate account. Later when you have to renew the policy, and seen the cost-to-benefit ratio of this approach, you could decide to go for a higher deductible.

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